Clark Eldridge (1896-1990)

From modest beginnings in the small western
Washington town of Lake Stevens, Clark Eldridge became one the state's
most noted bridge engineers.

Bright, energetic, and dedicated, Eldridge
completed engineering studies at Washington State College in
1920. Over the next fifteen years, he distinguished himself in
the Seattle City Bridge Engineer's office. Then, in 1936 Eldridge
joined
the State Highway Department. The forty-year old engineer found
himself designing two of the state’s most colossal bridges,
the Lake Washington Floating Bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

From the outset, Eldridge considered
the Tacoma Bridge “his bridge.” The Highway Department
had challenged him to find money to help build it, and he did. His
boss, State Highway Director Lacey V. Murrow, took Eldridge's design
and cost estimates to the Public Works Administration in Washington,
D. C. in the Spring of 1938.

Federal officials decided that Eldridge’s
plan was too expensive. They required the Washington State Toll
Bridge Authority to hire noted suspension bridge engineer Leon Moisseiff
of New York as a consultant. Moisseiff redesigned the structure,
and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge moved forward. Eldridge supervised
construction.

In November 1940 barely four months after
the bridge opened, Eldridge received the telephone call that changed
his life.

“I was in my office about a mile away
when word came that the bridge was in trouble,” he wrote later.
He drove to the bridge, but had to be lead off the leaping roadway
by a fellow engineer. “There, we watched the final collapse,”
Eldridge sadly noted.

Eldridge stayed with the project only
a few more months. In April 1941 he took a job with the U. S. Navy
on Guam. Soon, the start of World War II and a Japanese attack landed
Eldridge in a prisoner of war camp for the duration of the war.

After the war, Eldridge returned home
and worked as a consulting engineer until his retirement in 1970.
But, "retirement" was only an official departure from
public employment. Eldridge worked almost tirelessly until his death
two decades later.

Clark Eldridge’s memories of Galloping
Gertie remained tinged with sadness. As he wrote in his memoirs,
“I go over the Tacoma Bridge frequently and always with an
ache in my heart. It was my bridge."

The 1950 Narrows Bridge that rose in
its place must have been some consolation, however. The bridge we
cross today stands on the piers that Eldridge designed. And, with
its deep Warren stiffening truss deck, it closely resembles the
bridge Eldridge designed before fate fell across his path.

Frederick B. (Bert) Farquharson (1895-1970)

Few engineering professors leave a mark
in their profession as prominent as the one made by Frederick Bert
Farquharson. As a professor of civil engineering at the University
of Washington for most of his career, 1925 to 1963, Farquharson
pioneered aerodynamic studies of the 1940 and 1950 Tacoma Narrows
Bridges.

At the time, wind tunnel testing for
aerodynamic forces on bridges was in its infancy. Farquharson began
by applying basic information developed in the late 1930s for aircraft
design.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1895,
Farquharson served in World War I with the Canadian army and the
Royal Air Force. But, the Germans captured him in 1917 and Farquharson
spent the last 15 months of the war in a prisoner of war camp.

Upon returning to the United States,
Farquharson attended the University of Washington, where he graduated
in 1923. After two years working for the Boeing Company, the able
young engineer accepted an offer to join the UW faculty. He went
on to head the University's Engineering Experiment Station and became
a world-recognized authority on aerodynamic testing for bridge design.

Farquharson stood on the 1940 Tacoma
Narrows Bridge the day it collapsed. He intently monitored its behavior,
snapped photos, and took motion picture film of the disaster. Farquharson's
movie remains a "classic" that is viewed by engineering
students around the world.

In the 15 years that followed, Farquharson's
pioneering aerodynamic studies helped build the 1950 Narrows Bridge
and other suspension spans around the world. He retired from the
University of Washington in 1963. Farquharson died at home on June
17, 1970 at the age of 75.

Leon Moisseiff (1872-1943)

The lead designer of the 1940 Tacoma
Narrows Bridge, Leon Salomon Moisseiff, was at the peak of his engineering
profession when the ill-fated span collapsed into the chilly waters
of Puget Sound that November day.

Born in 1872 in Latvia, Moisseiff at
the age of 19 moved to New York with his parents. The talented young
engineer graduated from Columbia University in 1895. Only three
years later, he joined the New York City Bridge Department. Moisseiff
helped design and build some of the world's largest suspension bridges,
beginning with the 1909 Manhattan Bridge over the East River. He
published an article about his work on the Manhattan Bridge that
promptly won him national acclaim as the leading proponent of the
"deflection theory," which he introduced from Europe.

Moisseiff's elaboration of the "deflection
theory" laid the groundwork for thee decades of long-span suspension
bridges that became lighter and narrower. These bridges were not
only more "graceful" and beautiful to the public and to
engineers at the time, they also were cheaper to build, because
they used far less steel than earlier spans. Moisseiff became a
private consultant and was involved in the design of almost every
major suspension bridge built in the 1920s and 1930s.

The culmination of Moisseiff's work was
the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge. He called it the "most beautiful"
bridge in the world. Unfortunately, Moisseiff had entirely overlooked
the importance of aerodynamics in his bridge designs. As they became
lighter and narrower, they became more flexible and unstable.

When Galloping Gertie collapsed,Clark
Eldridge publicly pointed
the finger at Moisseiff. Eldridge believed that Moisseiff unethically
approached the Public Works
Administration
and convinced
them to
require Washington
State to hire Moisseiff, to review the design that Eldridge had
prepared.

Moisseiff's other professional colleagues
exonerated him. Still, the disaster effectively ended his career.
His health had been compromised since 1935, when he suffered a heart
attack. He died at age 71 on September 7, 1943, just three years
after failure of his "most beautiful" bridge.

In recognition of his contributions to
the engineering profession, the American Society of Civil Engineers
established the Moisseiff Award fund.

Lacey V. Murrow, Highway Director, 1940 WSDOT

Lacey V. Murrow (1904-1966)

To many people Lacey Murrow seemed to
stand in his younger brother's shadow. He was the older brother
of Edward R. Murrow, the noted pioneer journalist, radio and television
news commentator, and one-time head of the U. S. Information Agency.
But, each man made his own unique contributions to society and received
many accolades during his lifetime.

Born in Greensboro, North Carolina in
1904, Murrow grew up with his brothers Dewey and Ed in Blanchard,
Washington. The Murrow brothers attended Washington State University.
Lacey graduated with a B. S. in Military Science in 1926, and later in engineering in 1935.

Murrow had worked for the State Highway
Department intermittently beginning in 1919, then he moved steadily
into positions of higher responsibility. In 1933 Murrow began an
eight-year term as Director of the State Highway Department. It
proved a turning point in his career, and in the history of bridges
in Washington.

In 1937 Murrow served also as Chief Engineer
for the State Toll Bridge Authority. He became a forceful advocate
for a floating bridge across Lake Washington, which was completed
in 1940. The same year, Murrow oversaw the department's completion
of the first, and ill-fated Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Prior to America's entry into WWII, Lacey accepted a commission as a Lt. Col. in the Army Air Corps and resigned as Director of Highways in September 1940.
Before the war his favorite sport had been flying. In the war, it
became his profession. From 1940-46 he served as a command pilot,
winning military honors including a presidential citation with four
cluster decorations, the Legion of Merit, the Order of the British
Empire, and the Croix de Guerre. On April 27, 1948, Murrow was promoted to Brigadier
General in the Air Force. He served in Korea, Japan, and the United
States before retirement.

From 1954 until his death, Murrow lived
in Washington, D. C. and worked for Transportation Consultants,
Inc., serving most of those years as the firm's President.

A life-long smoker, Lacey Murrow, like
his brother Edward, began suffering from lung cancer in the early
1960s. He underwent an operation shortly before his brother's death
from the disease in 1965. Little more than a year later, in December
1966 at the age of 62, Lacey was found shot to death in his room
at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, a 12-gauge shotgun propped against
the bed.

Soon after Murrow's suicide, the Washington
State Legislature passed a resolution requesting that the State
Highway Commission re-name the first Lake Washington Floating Bridge
in his honor. The Commission agreed, and in March 1967 paid tribute
to Murrow, declaring, "this notable engineering achievement
received world-wide recognition for its pioneering of a new concept
in over-water structures."

The Workers Who Built the 1940 Narrows Bridge

"Boomers" were the most experienced
workers. "Boomers" is what they called bridge workmen
who traveled across the country, following one large bridge construction
project to the next. They worked on bridges their entire careers.
Often, they learned the skills from their fathers,
who had learned from their fathers. "Boomers" tended to
stick with the largest bridges when possible. These men formed the
nucleus of the crew, lending their expertise to help guide the hands
of inexperienced local workmen.

In early May 1940 workers laying concrete
for the roadway immediately noticed when the bridge began its soon-famous
waves. Most likely, it was one of the "boomers" who dubbed
the bouncing span, "Galloping Gertie."

The pay for workers on the first Narrows
Bridge averaged $1.35 per hour. Men worked a 40-hour week, Monday
through Friday, with Saturday and Sunday off. But, for those five
days, work proceeded around the clock. Crews changed shifts at 6
a.m., 2 p.m., and 10 p.m. In the months before the bridge's completion,
the workforce included about 225 men, plus a couple dozen engineers
and support staff.

A "Boomer": John Adolfson

One "boomer" on the first Narrows
Bridge was John Adolfson. By the time the 1940 Narrows Bridge
neared completion, Adolfson had been a "boomer" for some
20 years. He was 48 years old and married, with one son. Before
the Narrows job, he worked in San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge
and in New York on the George Washington Bridge.

Adolfson often worked at great heights.
Walking a single cable (with hands on a second cable for balance)
some 300 feet above the Narrows was a perilous part of his daily
job. Dangerous and difficult construction problems were routine
to "boomers" like Adolfson. He once told a reporter, "You
get over thinking about falling after you've been up there a few
years."

After the Narrows Bridge opened to the
public in the summer of 1940, John Adolfson and his family headed
off for his next job, located in Hawaii. He was there helping to
build dry docks at the Naval base in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese
attacked on December 7, 1941. His fate is unknown.

Workman: Tom "Pinetree" Colby

How does a Wyoming sheepherder get to
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? We may never know the full story, but
Tom "Pinetree" Colby was the guy. Born to a sheep-herding
family in Wyoming in 1912, Colby eventually left for California.
He learned the riveting trade in Sacramento and helped build the
Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

He turned up in Tacoma in 1939 when the
steel towers for Galloping Gertie began to rise off the piers. He
helped build the 1950 Narrows Bridge too. Colby quickly earned respect
for his genial personality, broad smile, and skill with hot rivets.

After the deck crew assembled the truss-deck
system, the riveting gangs followed. A typical crew was four men.
A "heater" heated and tossed the red-hot rivets, or sent
them through a pneumatic tube if the distance was too great. A "catcher"
caught and placed the rivets. A riveter worked a rivet gun on one
side of the cold steel to be joined. On the other side stood the
"bucker-up," who used an air jack or hand tool to back-stop
the hot rivet.

Workers
caulking cable band with lead wool, May 7, 1940 WSDOT

Fellow worker Joe Gotchy described "Pinetree"
as a "riveter's bucker-up extraordinary." Colby squeezed
into the most uncomfortable spots at odd body angles time and again,
enduring the rivet gun's loud hammering, always coming up for fresh
air with that big, toothy grin on his face.

Gotchy called Colby "unforgettable"
and "homely." But, the rivet man's skill and unfaltering
smile, even in the hardest conditions, won the admiration and friendship
of his co-workers. "Here is a diamond in the rough," Gotchy
declared.

Marie
Guske WSDOT

One Woman: Marie Guske

One woman worked on the 1940 Tacoma Narrows
Bridge. Marie Guske was her name. Marie was the secretary to lead
project engineer Clark Eldridge.